Papers about "Algorithm hiding" ?

John Kelsey kelsey.j at ix.netcom.com
Mon Jun 6 09:49:01 EDT 2005


>From: Ian G <iang at systemics.com>
>Sent: Jun 4, 2005 6:43 AM
>To: Steve Furlong <demonfighter at gmail.com>
>Cc: cryptography at metzdowd.com
>Subject: Re: Papers about "Algorithm hiding" ?

>GPG is an application that could be delivered by default
>in all free OSs.  BSD is more or less installed automatically
>with SSH installed.  Linux machines that are set up are
>also generally set up with SSH.

I think you need one more step here to get the protective coloration
effect you'd like, where encrypted files aren't automatic evidence of
wrongdoing: During installation, generate 50 or so random passwords
with too much entropy to feasibly guess (easy to do when no user need
ever remember them), and encrypt some reasonable-length files full of
binary zeros with them.  The number of randomly-generated files needs
to be randomized, naturally, and probably should follow some kind of
distribution with a big tail to the right, so that it's not that
uncommon for a random install to put several hundred encrypted files
on the drive.  The value of this is that an attacker now sees
encrypted files on every machine, most of which nobody on Earth can
decrypt.  If this is normal, then it's not evidence.  (There are
probably a bunch of issues here with putting plausible tracks in the
logs, datestamps on the files, etc.  But it seems like something like
this could work....)

...
>Certainly using another app is fine.  What would be more
>relevant to the direct issue is that it becomes routine to
>encrypt and to have encryption installed.  See the recent
>threads on where all the data is being lost - user data is
>being lost simply because the companies don't protect
>it.  Why aren't they protecting it?  Because there are no
>easy tools that are built in to automatically and easily
>protect it.

Huh?  There have been effective tools for protecting data from
disclosure for a long time, though it's not clear what good they'd do
for a company whose whole business was just selling access to that
data for a fee.  I'll bet the Choicepoints of the world are pretty
careful protecting, say, their payroll and HR records from disclosure.
It's just *your* data they don't mind giving out to random criminals.
No amount of crypto could have helped this.

>iang

--John Kelsey

---------------------------------------------------------------------
The Cryptography Mailing List
Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majordomo at metzdowd.com



More information about the cryptography mailing list